Gardening update…

Okay. It’s been awhile since my last post. I’ve been able to complete moving the soil to the lower garden bed and it looks great. We had a few consecutive dry days so I could get on the tractor and move the 10 or so cubic yards of organic soil to its new home. This more than doubles my garden area. The lower bed is about 12 feet by 40 feet. Should be plenty of room for all my veggies this year.

I also repotted my tomatoes, corn, squash, and sunflowers today. Things are growing great in the greenhouse.

It’s still about a month until the last freeze danger is over so got a ways to go yet before the more tender plants are truly ready to move outside, but I’ve got some of the early, frost resistant plants in the ground already. Some peas, beans, onions, cucumbers, garlic and some carrots in the small hot house. I also planted red potatoes last week. Things are looking good!

New hothouse for the garden…

I been reading about hoop houses and other types of hothouses for gardens. I thought I’d scrounge through some of my left over wood from other projects and see if I could put something together. Hopefully, I could come up with something that was functional and that looked decent.

Here’s a series of pictures that show the progression of the project.

Not sure I’m terribly happy with the results, but all it cost me was $30 for the plastic and I have enough left over for several more hothouses if I want. Maybe I’ll try an actual hoop house design with PVC pipe next time.

Of course, it rained once I finished the hothouse and I noticed a couple of small pools of water on top so I’ll have to adjust a few things to keep that from happening, but I think it will work fine.

I probably should have answered the question of what I plan to put in the hothouse before I actually built it. I have to figure that out now I suppose. I’m thinking about some delicate plants like my romaine lettuce or peppers once they get a bit bigger in the greenhouse. Tomatoes are also an option, but I think they will grow too larger to the hothouse and I’d prefer to not have to strip the plastic top off it, but we’ll see.

I also picked up some red seed potatoes and yellow onion sets at the store today. Here they are:

I’ll let the seed potatoes start to sprout, then plant them and cover them with some straw. The onions I’ll plant directly in the garden. I haven’t really planned the layout of where everything will go in the garden yet, but I think that will kind of evolve as it needs to.

The bottom terrace still needs several loads of garden soil but the ground is just too soft with all the rain to finish that.  Maybe over the next few weeks, the weather will cooperate.

 

 

 

 

 

A new bread recipe…

I found a new Italian bread recipe for the Kitchen Aid mixer last week and decided to give it another try this morning. Not bad, not bad. It is super easy and takes very little work on my part. Here’s a few pictures of the finished loafs:

They look like big biscuits, don’t they? Not the most beautiful loafs I’ve ever made but very tasty. The dough rises great, but if not contained in a bread pan, it tends to stay relatively flat during baking. Nevertheless, one loaf is already gone and the other is quickly disappearing.

I made this recipe last week and thought it worthy of another try today. Next time, I think I’ll use a bread pan and see if the loafs come out looking more like traditional loafs of bread. I spread a bit of honey from our bee hives on a slice and found heaven.

Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll post the recipe.

Black Magnolia tree budding!!!

Took a few pictures of the magnolia tree buds beginning to open up. Spring is coming very soon! Take a look:

These are going to be beautiful and the blossoms will be HUGE. These trees are still so small, only about 5-6 feet tall. And at the end of each branch are these buds that are the size of a chickadee! Can’t wait till they are completely open.

Bee hive update…

I had some down time thanks to the yucky weather this past weekend so there was some time to do a bit of prep work on the bee hive components. I built a new base to set the new hives on. The one on the right is from last year. The larger one on the right is the new one. We’ll put two separate hives one the new base.This will allow us to keep the hives off the ground and protect them from water and other undesirable events.

I was also able to ‘paint’ about 30 frames with wax. This will give the bees a head start on drawing out new wax honeycomb. Most beekeepers agree that providing additional wax on new frames allows bees to build honeycomb more quickly. Since my good friend and beekeeper, Jim, gave me some surplus wax, I thought I’d put it to good use.

Left: unwaxed. Right: waxed

Melting the wax

Wax ‘painted’ frame

Take a look at these pictures. You can see the additional wax I painted on the frame. A side benefit of doing this activity is that it makes the house smell great as the wax melts.

We’re still about 6 weeks out from getting our new packages of bees, but I want to be ready for them.

Seedlings are poking through…

Yes! I have many, many seedlings now. It’s only been a week since I planted all those seeds and many are sprouting already. Nature is amazing. Take some dirt, seeds, water and a bit of warmth (provided by my electric heater and the sun), and voila, seedlings. Here’s what I have thus far:

Cauliflower

Carrots

Broccoli

Cabbage

Cumcumber

Sweet Corn

If you mouse over the pictures, the caption will indicate the type of seedlings in the picture. At least it works on my end. I’m thrilled with the progress so far. It seems I’m pretty good a getting things to grow in the greenhouse. Where I struggle a bit is in keeping the seedlings from getting too tall and spindly. I’m planning on keeping most of the plants in smaller potting containers this time to see if that might help a bit.

My sunflowers are now about a foot tall! Here they were just after I tied them up last weekend. They were having difficulty growing upright (the too tall and spindly problem). See how they look kind of wilted and drooped over?

Here they are today. They look much stronger and more healthy. I hope they will be well on their way by the time the weather and soil warms up enough to plant them outdoors.

I had another 12 yards of garden soil delivered this morning. I hoped I could finish off the lower terrace of the garden this weekend but alas, the four tenths of an inch of rain over the past two days put an abrupt end to that plan. I made a test run with the tractor without any soil in the bucket to see if the path to the garden was too wet and soggy. The path was fine, but the garden area itself was way too wet. I nearly got the tractor stuck in the fresh soil! That would have been a real pain but I was able to slowly maneuver the tractor back to firmer ground and got the heck out of the garden! Whew. Here’s what the lower terraced bed looks like today:

Another dozen or so bucket loads of soil and it’ll be ready for planting. Just have to let things dry out a bit. Maybe next weekend.

 

A video tour of the garden work as seen from my John Deere…

Okay, I’m gonna take you on a video tour of moving the soil from where I had it dropped to its location in the terraced garden bed. I shot this video from the seat of my tractor as I scooped up a load of soil (about 800 pounds per bucket load) and moved it to the garden bed.

One more day of this and I should be done with the 12 yards of soil I had delivered on Monday. I expect I’ll need more garden soil before I’m finished, but this is a great start.

 

 

 

Terraced garden bed progress…

Whew! Got 12 yards of premium garden soil delivered Monday. I’m using my John Deere tractor to move it one bucket at a time to the terraced bed. It’s a bit dicey since the current location is quite sloped and tenuous for the tractor, but it’s working out so far. I haven’t gotten too close to rolling over. Speaking of rolling over, the tractor has a roll bar that I’ve been using, but more on that a bit later. Here are a few pictures of the progress. These are the before pictures:

Before the new soil

Before the new soil

Here’s the progress so far:

As you can see, it’s looking more like a garden bed now. Still have about 6-8 more yards of soil to move, but the area is starting to level out and that makes using the tractor much quicker and easier. I hope to have all the soil moved by this weekend when it’s supposed to starts raining again.

So back to the roll bar on the tractor…I discovered yesterday afternoon that with the roll bar up and locked into place, the tractor will almost fit into the garage. I discovered this accidentally by forgetting the roll bar was up while trying to drive into the garage. Luckily, the garage door openings are arched which allowed the roll bar to wedge itself into the opening! The only way I could get the tractor unstuck was to let the air out of the rear tires. A bit of paint was scraped off the frame opening but no real damage was done. Sure dodged a bullet there. I didn’t think to take any pictures. I was too mad at myself for doing something so stupid. Oh well, lesson learned.

Greenhouse update…

I planting a bunch of new seeds yesterday which included tomato, okra, bell and jalapeno peppers and several flower varieties. My greenhouse shelves are getting quite full already! Here’s a few pictures.

tomatoes and onions

Flowers for Sheri

sunflowers in the upper right

The heater in bottom left

Looking in from the door

Hyacinth

Trying okra this year

I love gardening this time of year. The days are getting longer, the soil is waking up (so are the weeds!), the early blooming flowers, trees and shrubs are making themselves known. It’s a new beginning and everything’s fresh.

Here’s some progress on my newest gardening terrace bed:

Before the new soil

Before the new soil

I was able to get the 3 inch perforated drain pipe in and get it covered. Now, I need to bring in about 10-12 yards of rich soil and I’ll be ready to plant as soon as the weather allows.

Garden prep today…

Turned out to be a beautiful day. The sun came out about midday, and while it was still a bit on the cool side, working in the sun was great!

I took care of several chores including some weeding, using my new 400,000 BTU propane burner, removing the mulched leaves from the upper flower bed and replacing them with bark, adding some retaining wall bricks to the end of one garden bed, planting a bunch of seeds in trays in the greenhouse, and planting the rhubarb plants. Whew! I’m a bit tuckered out now. But it’s a good tuckered out feeling. I love it when I can see such immediate results from my work. Here are a few pictures of my handiwork today: